Discussions By Condition: I cannot get a diagnosis.

Extreme Ear Pain

My girlfriend has had some major ear pain, head aches, and recently it has will show up on both sides (both ears). It started off a few months ago with a sharp pain in the middle of the night and then vomiting, after the vomiting was done the ear was just sore and the pain subsided, two weeks went by before it happened again, we went to the emergency room and they diagnosed it as Shingles, she is 23 and there was no visible shingles, and she was told to take Prednisone and Axcyclovar for around 3-4 weeks, she went through the prescribed course and it resulted in nothing, after going to the ER again another doctor conifirmed that it had to be shingles, which is uncommon in that age, and there are no symptoms of shingles, don't know how you can prescribe such a hard drug as a just in case with symptoms except ear pain. SO just today her mother was having all the same issues, she went to the doctor and they use an inner ear scope and said she had an inner ear infection and gave her the same perscriptions, I don't think it will work and I checked all of the earache symptoms and nothing comes close, does anyone have any idea what this could be and if it may be genetic? It has also been abnormally cold in my region which also triggers more pain to her ear. Sharp ear pain, comes and goes on a pain scale of 8-10, and causes her to wake up several times in the middle of the night, so laying down causes flare ups, we have no insurance and are tired of going through preventative solutions as an answer to nothing. HELP!!!

2 Replies:

She's going to have better luck with an ENT specialist than an emergency room doctor. See if she can get in to see one. It could be shingles. It could be her back molars, so she might want to see a dentist, too.

She's going to have better luck with an ENT specialist than an emergency room doctor. See if she can get in to see one. It could be shingles. It could be her back molars, so she might want to see a dentist, too. The first ER doctor talked to an ENT who was in the hospital at the time and they pointed it to be Shingles, hence all the drugs that were perscribed, it has been over a month now and she has ran through the course of meds, she is going to see a dentist next week, but if that doesn't solve the issue, then maybe a head doc, thank you Monsterlove for the help, but we got that far already:) Anyone else have any bright ideas?:)